I’m not sure it proves much, if anything, other than one if one tries to do so one can produce similar results in different products!

Leaving settings at default is a little odd, and there’s no real attempt to use the b&w conversion process to separate neighbouring colours into distinct tones – eg those in the left woman’s blouse or between the brown briefcase in the foreground and the middle person’s red sweater.

Why didn’t he use Lightroom’s targeted adjustment tool, for example? I’d argue that it alone produces better b&w images because you’re keeping your eyes on the image. But it is an interesting exercise.

Update

My view is that it’s very hard for anyone to be at the same very high level of expertise with a number of different apps, and skilled hands can squeeze the same “objective quality” out of whichever app they decide to use. So my emphasis is less on pixel-peeping and more on the process of getting to the best expression of the picture.

That’s why I put so much emphasis on the benefits of using the targeted adjustment tool – the little nipple in the top left corner of LR’s B&W panel or in Photoshop’s B&W adjustment layer – as I find that it your keeps your eyes completely on the picture and its changing appearance.

By comparison, dragging sliders is inherently a very mechanical process, while presets usually trade on the blind faith that their authors have accurately calibrated the spectral response of film X (and factored in lens filters and developer agitation…).

3 Responses to “
B&W from different angles ”

Mike, I’ll respond over in the LL thread and also update this post – it’s confusing enough already!

Also, I’m glad you got a copy of that book as it’s my favourite. It was written at the perfect time when Adobe were about to unveil Photoshop’s B&W adjustment layer and Lightroom had been released. So I went heavily into the latest techniques – and it’s still bang up to date.

Well, as it turns out, we had our wires crossed – or more particularly, our forum posts! What are the odds of that happening!?

Anyway, by coincidence, I was in Barnes and Noble in Jacksonville last night and saw your 2007 Advanced Digital Black and White Photography book. I could not obtain it in the UK when I asked for it about three months ago. But there it was. I just bought it. Nice job. Are you going to do a second edition?

Also, I wanted to ask you how to make the RAW file you’ve offered to convert available to you. It’s 29 Mb zipped. Do you have a suggestion?

Well, as I tried to reply to you on the LL forum only to discover that you had removed your post, I thought I’d reply here.

As an acknowledged expert in Lightroom, you make a good point. I, of course, am not such an expert. However, by leaving some settings at ”default’, I was simply attempting to use just ‘basics’ in each conversion to see what result I could expect, without pursuing the ‘ultimate’ conversion in each case. The idea was to get a fundamental understanding of each environment and the overall ‘character’ of each’s result. I think attempting to make the absolute ‘best’ result in each case would bring into the exercise many more personal preferences, which of course would please some and irritate others.

I did, of course, use the global tonal adjustment sliders in each application to vary tonal mix for each image, as the article shows. For local adjustments, I used the adjustment brush or equivalent in each application – just my preference.

I’m not sure I was deliberately trying to ‘prove’ anything, as I suggest in the conclusion. To do that I would have gone ‘all out’ in each application, but I think I would have chosen a different, less mundane image for that particular exercise. I may take up that challenge when Silver Efex Pro’s new version ships. Anyway, I was keen to share the ‘overview’ exercise and get feedback, so thank you for taking the time.

Perhaps you would like to participate even more – as I said, I don’t claim to be a Lightroom 3 expert! I did offer to provide the RAW file for anyone who would like to spend the time on sharing their own conversions?